Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

28 April 2022

Colour and Costume: Jane Fonda in The Morning After

Jane Fonda in ”The Morning After”, 1986 | American Filmworks. Lorimar Productions

The 1980s. The most underrated decade in terms of style and music and film is one of my favourites. The decade of power dressing but also the decade of the make-it-in-the-garage aesthetic. The decade that was less secure in taste but also the decade of unabashedly expressivity. The decade of excess but also the decade that didn’t try so much to force something that’s different into being the same. The decade of commercial greed and conspicuous wealth but also the decade of a riotous energy in the streets. It was the decade for everybody. A creative free-for-all. Everything was entirely possible and there were no constraints, no boundaries. There was a desire to express things independently and as freely as possible. As part of Generation X, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The neo-noir films of the 1980s give me a particular thrill about the decade. There are the highly acclaimed, naturally, like Blade Runner, but I am equally drawn to the more under-the-radar ones like Against All Odds and Angel Heart, or To Live and Die in L.A. Sidney Lumet’s The Morning After falls into that same category. The only picture that Lumet shot in Hollywood was also one he didn’t shoot out of a major studio, but using a pickup crew of technicians. Alex Sternbergen (Jane Fonda), a washed-up actress, wakes up on Thanksgiving morning with a hangover in an apartment she doesn’t recognise and with no recollection of the previous night, and with a dead body in bed next to her. Unable to go to the police, because of a previous conviction, she tries to tie the pieces together, reluctantly turning to an ex-cop, Turner Kendall (Jeff Bridges), for help. Both Fonda and Bridges’ performances are truly great and the relationship forming between them looks very genuine, even though secrets and resentments are part of it. Broken people can mend other broken people.

Jane Fonda in ”The Morning After”, 1986 | American Filmworks. Lorimar Productions

“In The Morning After, we looked for expanses of high colour,” Sidney Lumet wrote in his book, Making Movies. “No colour was excluded, but we wanted one colour to dominate each scene. […] For the title sequence, I found a series of walls, yellow, red, brown, blue, and just had Fonda walking dejectedly past them. Buildings were deep blue, baby pink, any strong colour. Los Angeles can provide an endless supply of that kind of decor.” That, it does, and Sidney Lumet makes great use of it by placing Jane Fonda’s silhouette, dressed in black, in front of them, in one of the opening sequences. “Don’t the 80s now seem naïve and colourful compared to the cool, elegant decade the 90s tried so hard to be?,” Jürgen Müller remarks in his film comments on the 1980s. That’s one of the things I like about the films of the 80s. I also like the atmospheric, colourful density provided by L.A. in The Morning After, interspersed with sunlit vast open spaces. It’s part of the storytelling. Because form follows function. Sidney Lumet wanted to use primary colours because “living in Los Angeles was part of the debilitating influence on the character played by Jane Fonda. I wanted all colour exaggerated: reds redder, blues bluer. We used filters.”

Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges in ”The Morning After”, 1986 | American Filmworks. Lorimar Productions

Los Angeles is known, and is known in movies, for its light and you really get that feeling when Jane Fonda steps out in the blinding light, shot from above, pinned on the canvas of a bright red building. She looks trapped in that strong, harsh, anti-glamour light. And she looks small passing by those endless colourful walls Sidney Lumet was mentioning. They look threatening and that’s the idea. “Blue or red may mean totally different things to you and me. But as long as my interpretation of a colour is persistent, eventually you’ll become aware (subconsciously, I hope) of how I’m using that colour and what I’m using it for.” The opening titles are neon blue.

Jane Fonda in ”The Morning After”, 1986 | American Filmworks. Lorimar Productions

Jane Fonda’s costumes are not however colourful excess (another trademark of the 80s), except for an emerald green trouser suit – beautifully paired with a silk white blouse and heels – which however does not belong to her but to her drag queen friend she has to turn to find something to wear when running from the police. It’s the only “outfit” she wears. Her wardrobe is built around tops and bottoms, a 1980s concept very much built on the idea of a man’s wardrobe: wrap skirts, sharp-shouldered, loose-fit jackets. Smart, free, outgoing, but subdued nonetheless. It’s 1980s alright, but it’s like a breath of fresh air in the overheated atmosphere of Los Angeles. I have always thought that Jane Fonda fit right in the 1980s, because of her modern elegance appeal, but most of all because of her attitude, independent and free thinking, and because she always had the authenticity of an actor completely in control of her art.

Jane Fonda in ”The Morning After”, 1986 | American Filmworks. Lorimar Productions

Read Instead…in Print

A photo of a good book about cinema. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.

Read instead…in print #11

“Beautiful journalism”, John Huston said about Picture. No stylistic flourishing, no gratuitous metaphors, no speculation or gossip, just clarity and simplicity, a probing insight into filmmaking. Reading Picture, first published in 1952, has reminded me about what real journalism is about. Integrity. Objectivity. Responsibility. Power of observation. Respect for the privacy of your subjects.

Lillian Ross’s reporting of the making of John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage is one of the most authentic and accurate documentations of how a movie is made, of how the big studio Hollywood mechanisms work and how an original, artistic film and a director’s uncompromising vision can be slashed into a whole different thing when the studio heads and producers step in and cut down by a third a film. The studio heads who think that you have to tell people what the movie is about because they can not think by themselves. The studio heads who disconsider any other kind of movie made outside Hollywood because they say those films want to harm the heart-warming, sentimental Hollywood motion-picture business. The producers who disturbingly admit that once the director is through, they can usually do whatever they want with a picture.

One of my favourite parts in the book were the John Huston passages. Every mention of his name has the capacity of revealing something from the character of this magnetic, bigger-than-life man, great director and talented artist, and to make the reader part of the moment. His wit, his humour, his ego, his search for simplicity and truth, his appetite for life and art. As Anjelica Huston says in the introduction to Ross’ book, “in the country recently, my husband, Robert Graham, and I were reading Picture aloud to each other. We were laughing and having a lot of fun when suddenly I realised that reading this book was like being in the same room with my father again.”

But what I believe Lillian Ross captured first and foremost, and so well and effortlessly, was that rare quality that John Huston had for looking at and making art with enthusiasm and curiosity but without intellectualisation. She was able to capture the essence of the artist, with his many facets, just by reporting the facts. That’s a rare quality, too.

Leaving Space for the Reader’s Imagination: Interview with Marianne Dubuc

”Le lion et l’oiseau” (“The Lion and the Bird”). Marianne Dubuc

If we had the courage to trust our imagination, to leave things unexplained, to find our own answers, to accept the mystery of not knowing everything, to constantly look for something new in the most ordinary of things, to dream in the day time, we could hold on to that sense of curiosity that comes with childhood. Growing up narrows the stretch of our imagination. Children’s books are what can keep it alive. I feel I can never praise enough children’s books writers and illustrators. They are the keepers of our children’s imagination, and, if we are willing to allow it, if we haven’t forgotten to be children ourselves, of our own imagination as well. The books of Marianne Dubuc not only leave room for the readers’ imagination, they play with making the stories their own.

We have several of Marianne’s books in our home, but there is one I always come back to. Le lion et l’oiseau (The Lion and the Bird) is a story that comes alive through images. It is a moving, hopeful and truthful at the same time, story about friendship and family and about the fact that we may be forced to or faced with having to part with our friends or dear ones at some point in our lives. It is a powerful and meaningful tale not because it unwraps big truths about life itself, but because of its gentle manner – through the minimalist style of drawing and cheerful yet calming pencil work, through the scarcity of words, through the author’s psychological sensitivity – it addresses a delicate issue in anyone’s life, especially a child’s. Its genteel power allows children to stand up a little adversity. Its greatest beauty is that it says so much through images and even through the absence of images, allowing the reader not only to follow the characters so naturally but to follow their own thoughts, too, weaving in and out of the story.

Born in Quebec, Marianne Dubuc has developed her natural love of art and drawing since childhood and after studying Graphic Design, in 2006 she began her career in children’s literature and illustration. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages and among her many awards, she is the recipient of the Governor General’s Award of Canada for Le lion et l’oiseau, in 2014, and for Le chemin de la montagne (Up The Mountain Path), in 2018, and the recipient of the TD Prize for Children’s Literature for L’autobus (The Bus), in 2015, and for Le chemin de la montagne. But beyond the international recognition of her work, the most important thing remains the connection she forms with the reader through her stories. Reading her books feels like she’s not just telling a story she has crafted, but that she’s constantly at play with the reader. Is there a greater joy for a young reader than hopping on the train of imagination and being a player in a game of words and pictures?

In our interview, Marianne and I talk about the underrated beauty of wordless picture books, how cultural differences impact books, her endless freedom of creativity as a child and why animals make for better characters than humans.

”Le lion et l’oiseau” (“The Lion and the Bird”). Marianne Dubuc

Your book, La mer (The Sea), is a wordless picture book that follows a cat and a winged fish on a long adventure. Are you usually reluctant in attaching words to your stories?

I wouldn’t say I am “reluctant”, but I do prefer to tell stories in images rather than with words. Wordless picture books are my favourite, although the only completely wordless book I ever wrote was La mer. In books like The Lion and the Bird (Le lion et l’oiseau), or Up the Moutain Path (Le chemin de la montagne), and my recent Bear and the Whisper of the Wind (Ours et le murmure du vent), you can see that I don’t explain everything, I leave a lot of space to the reader so they can interpret the story as they wish. This is something that is very important to me when I tell a story.

The Lion and the Bird is a favourite in our home. It has words, but not too many. I am particularly fond of this kind of picture books because it allows the readers’, and especially children’s, imagination enter the world in the book very freely. And I think that is a great approach to children’s books, because it gives children the chance to navigate their own feelings and emotions. Many times, those wordless pages are the most fascinating. Your book puts faith in the readers and I think this is the greatest gift for a child. Is that why you say it is important to you that the reader finds his own way in your storytelling?

I have always agreed with the idea that we should have faith in the children’s ability to understand a lot more than we adults might think. And I might add that adults sometimes lose the confidence to interpret art on their own. They wait for the artist (or some art expert) to explain what they should see/here/think/feel in front of a piece of art. In children’s books, adults will often be insecure when confronted with a worldless picture book (they are harder to sell, according to marketing experts). I like to challenge them and hope they discover that they, too, just like their 2-year-old, can use their imagination and create stories. It is something children do spontaneously (if given the space and time to do it), and as we grow up, sadly, we lose that.

In The Lion and the Bird, it all happened a bit by accident. As I wrote this story, I decided to try something new. (This being said, it was only my third book, so I didn’t have much experience anyway… I could add that I have always tried to experiment with format and storytelling with every book I have written). I wrote a summary of the story, and then drew the whole book from beginning to end. Once the illustrations were made, I added as little text as possible in order for the images to tell the story on their own, and for the words to sort of complete the sentences and guide the reader. I had NO idea how this would turn out. It was only when I got the printed book in my hands and read it for the first time that I realised something was happening. I discovered that by saying just a little bit, and giving the space to the reader to fill in the blanks, I wrote a book that could become very personal for everyone, in their own special way. Some migrants say they identified to Lion and Bird because they had to leave a place/family and didn’t know when they would go back. Some grandparents tell me about their grandchildren spending the summer vacations with them and how when fall comes they have to part again… They are all very different stories and although some have more dramatic and sad stories to fill in the blanks, I feel that each and everyone’s story is important and deserves to be allowed to exist.

The Lion and The Bird made me realise what not explaining everything could bring to storytelling, and I have used this in many of my books from then on. For the reasons explained above, but I also think it fits my personality. I really don’t like to be in a position where I tell people what to do. I prefer to help and see where it will lead them.

Other books, like Le chemin de la montagne and Ours et le murmure du vent also, have this unexplained, open to interpretation characteristic, but in their own way.

”Le lion et l’oiseau” (“The Lion and the Bird”). Marianne Dubuc

When we reach the complete blank pages in the book, my son and I always go: “Wow, so much snow!” Did that idea occur to you from the very beginning, as the story progressed?

As I said earlier, I wrote the whole book in images. I had to tell the story using the illustrations rather then words. I wanted to say that time went by with Bird and Lion being happy together throughout the winter, so I naturally put in blank pages to express time passing, and season changing. I didn’t see it as something special and was surprised by how people always mention these blank pages when talking about the book (although, now that I am out of the creation process and time has passed, I do understand why this is an odd thing that we don’t often see in books). I guess you have the UK version (Book Island)? Because in the US version (Enchanted Lion) there are no entirely blank pages, the publisher asked that we put a bit of the Lion’s house in their edition.

I mentioned the blank pages not because I found that surprising, quite the contrary, I found it very natural, but because of that very reason you mentioned, that you don’t see it often in books – and proof of that is the US edition of the book. I somehow likened the experience with those moments in Miyazaki’s films when nothing seems to happen but which give both the characters and viewers the respite to just be present, and register the time passing.

I am flattered that you would make a comparison with Miyazaki… His work is much loved in our household (smiles).

”Ours et le murmure du vent” (“The Bear and the Whisper of the Wind”). Marianne Dubuc

Even with The Bear and the Whisper of the Wind, I like to just follow the leaf and the whisper of the wind to walk me through the story as they guide the bear, leaving the words out. I love it. I love how your books make the reader pay attention to details visually.

Interesting… I had never read this book without the text. I just did. It works very well! Thank you so much for this! (smiles) You just gave me a little bit of self confidence (I have been struggling a lot with the pandemic and everything going on). Writing is hard at the moment, and you just showed me that what I tried to do with Ours et le murmure du vent works without words. A way of storytelling that I particularly love. So I guess the way I write my books makes sense, after all. (smiles) I might seem a bit cryptic, it is hard to explain. It is very interesting to discover a side of our own work we had not seen. We feel like we know our books so well, and you just showed me a part of the book I had not thought of.

”I think that the fact that I don’t explain everything
gives a lot of space to the reader. Leaving the reader the choice
is very important to me, especially when writing for children and
talking about delicate subjects.”

I am glad I did. Your drawing seems so effortless. I love your sense of body language, and now I go back to The Lion and the Bird, the incredibly subtle differences in the way you draw the lion, his posture (when he sits at the table, when he sleeps, when he sits in the armchair is different when he spends the winter with the bird than when he is alone). How much hand-drawing does your illustration style involve?

I do everything by hand. I might use the iPad to do sketches because it saves time as I build the book. But the actual illustrations are made with watercolour, coloured pencil and pencil. I did make a very few books (2) on the iPad, but really prefer doing it by hand. I like to have a paper original in the end, and I really love drawing and don’t have the same relation to computer images.

When did you know you wanted to write children’s books?

Drawing and images of all kinds have always been a passion of mine. Since I was a little girl my favourite hobby has been to draw and craft things. There even is a video of the 10-year-old me answering the question “What do you want to do when you grow up”. You can see it here. I remember not really knowing what to answer, being aware that I was only a child and couldn’t possibly know what I would do as an adult… I simply answered what I loved to do at the time (smiles).

”La mer” (“The Sea”). Marianne Dubuc

What was your favourite book as a child, the book that sparked your imagination or spoke to you more than any other?

There are many. My father gave me a huge edition of Les fables de La Fontaine with Gustave Dore’s wood engravings. I have always liked stories with animals, La Fontaine and Oedipe’s Fables being very present in my childhood (in a book, but also on television, in front of which I spent a lot of time). Later I loved Edward Gorey’s universe and drawings. I also remember reading Le prince de Motordu by Pef for the first time, and discovering the joy of playing with words. I don’t think it exists in English, because it would be complicated to translate, the concept of the book being that the author keeps changing words like a hat (“chapeau” in French) becoming a castle (“château” in French).

I also loved the illustrations of Gerda Muller (I still do) in her books at Père Castor, especially in Les bons amis. I also have fond memories of listening to Peter and The Wolf and turning the pages of the read along book. These two inspirations I discovered (and read over and over again) at my grandmother’s house.

So many great classics. I agree about Le prince de Motordu, it wouldn’t be the same in English. If only we could read every book in its original language. Your books have been translated in other languages. Does that affect in any way how you write a story?

Growing up in French I knew nothing of Dr Seuss. I am sure I would have loved his books as a child. When our kids were young, I tried translating his books “live” for them. It was a real nightmare, but did make for fun spontaneous, quirky sentences. (smiles) I am indeed very lucky to see my work translated in so many languages. People sometimes ask why it is so. I think that the fact that I don’t explain everything gives a lot of space to the reader, and that this can be applied in many cultures differently. Maybe this explains a bit…

At the beginning of my career, it didn’t affect me at all, because I didn’t think that my books would be translated. But my second book being the first to have been translated, I quickly learned all the different ways a book and its text can be perceived differently from one culture to the next. I have been lucky that my publishers left me a lot of freedom to do the books I wanted the way I wanted to, and didn’t pressure me to change things so it would sell better on the international market. So, although I was conscious of the particularity of some markets, I didn’t change the way I wrote my books.

I do learn with every knew book that in some countries they don’t understand a concept, don’t have a certain cultural reference (Little Red Riding Hood is an example), don’t like a certain type of animal, etc. One example is the blank pages in The Lion and the Bird, where the publisher mentioned that the US market wasn’t the same as Quebec’s or France’s. I also realised that, in English, most children’s books are written in the past tense. In French it is not so, we have both past and present depending on the book. For Le chemin de la montagne, the verb tense was really important to me in the way the story would be read. I will explain: Mrs Badger is very old in the book. The first sentence of the book is “Mrs Badger is very old…” In the story, as time passes, Mrs Badger at some point is not with Lulu, the little cat, anymore. I don’t say she has died, I just mention that she is tired and cannot join Lulu in his mountain hikes anymore. I wanted the readers, especially the young ones, to decide if they were ready to have Mrs Badger die, or if they would rather have her simply be too tired… Leaving the reader the choice is very important to me, especially when writing for children and talking about delicate subjects. I had never noticed this before, and never thought about how the verb tense could have an impact on the reader’s interpretation of the story.

There have been many other changes that I was asked to make in my books. Sometimes I agree if I think it respects my book’s original idea. Sometimes I refuse. I find it funny, interesting, and sometimes annoying. But I don’t change my stories because it is important to me to be honest about my work and do the books I would personally like as a child, or as a parent.

I think that honesty and integrity shows in your books. And I have to say that I love your choice of characters. I have always loved stories with animals. And I also find that children usually respond better to animal characters than human characters. Do animals make better characters than humans? How do you choose your characters for each story?

First, I really prefer to draw animals to humans. I find myself to be better at drawing a cat than a little girl. I also grew up in the 1980’s, in Quebec, where the children tv shows were almost all filled with animal characters (The Three Musketeers were dogs, Around the World in 80 Days were felines, to name a few… But I assure you that when I look back, it is very impressive to realise how A LOT of tv shows – and as I said before I watched a lot of tv! – had animal characters). I also loved La Fontaine and Oedipe’s fables. So I think that my imagination has been filled with these animal characters and that when I tell a story they naturally come to mind.

And, of course, it is useful to have animals instead of humans as characters. First, it is easier to have more readers identify with a cat than with a white skinned little girl. The freedom of interpretation that is so important to me can be helped with animal characters, since they give a broader answer to culture, gender identity, etc. Secondly, parents will sometimes be hesitant to buy a book with a girl character to their son. When the character is a cat, it is more gender/cultural fluid. Children usually don’t mind as much as adults, it is a social thing I guess, although our daughter always asked me to change the character’s name to a girl’s name because to her it was very important to identify… Our son didn’t mind at all… We are all different readers!

And as for the choice of the character, I do as you would… I try to see in my head what it would look like. And I draw, draw, draw until it appears in my sketchbook. I do draw the character early in the process so I know what he looks like, and it helps me tell the story.

”La mer” (“The Sea”). Marianne Dubuc

Do you have a work routine, do you constantly write ideas in a notebook and draw in your sketchbook?

Ha! I envy those artists I see on Instagram who have sketchbooks filled with doodles and drawings. The truth is, I don’t have time to draw, unless I am working on a book. My work routine is trying to find time and space to work on my books at the same time I take care of my children and the dishes and the laundry…

I do have notebooks in which I write my ideas, work on my stories, etc. I like to write everything that comes to mind in my notebooks, and see how a story will come to be. And the places I find it easier to concentrate and create are usually parks and the library. At home, there are too many distractions.

I do like to draw for fun with my two children and my husband. One thing we love to do is a collective drawing following each other’s ideas. Someone says “draw a duck”, and we all have to draw a duck on our sheet of paper. Then we pass the paper to the person next to us, and someone says “draw a banana”, and we all add a banana to the drawing. And so on until we find the drawings are full. This way we end up with 4 collective drawings. We laugh a lot and it is great for encouraging our creativity.

What is paramount that parents do to encourage their children’s creativity and to nurture their spontaneous and imaginative spirit for as long as possible?

I don’t think I have the answer to this question, I wouldn’t pose myself as an expert. But if I think about MY creativity and the way MY parents did foster my self confidence and imagination, I would say that they made sure to tell me every chance they got that I was soooo creative, original, etc. I knew if I showed a drawing to my mother, she would always praise me and tell me I was great. In a way, she convinced me throughout the years that I, indeed, was a creative person. I don’t know what psychologists would say about this, but it worked for me.

And, of course, showing and reading books and all kinds of creative things is important too.

”La mer” (“The Sea”). Marianne Dubuc

Other than the books and tv shows you have mentioned, what other source of inspiration has been important for your work?

Oh! I feel I put to much emphasis on the tv shows… haha! You have to keep in mind that in the 1980’s-90’s there weren’t as many tv shows for children as there are now. I couldn’t, the way children nowadays can do, spend 2 hours straight in front of the tv, there wasn’t enough in the programme.

One thing I LOVED, and have fond memories of, is when my mother would take me out at night to have supper or in an adult outing (being an only child I often spent my evenings with my parents and their friends, in restaurants or cafes), and we would walk in more touristic areas of the city, and we would come upon street artists (caricaturists, painters, etc.). I LOVED watching the images come to life. My mother jokes that she could leave me there for hours. I didn’t move an inch, I was so impressed.

I know what you are saying about the tv shows from the 80s and 90s. I grew up in the 80s, too, and the shows that were on tv were few, but so creative, and the kind that managed to tap into children’s universe I guess, not at all a bad influence or noisy information as tv has become in the meantime.

Hehe! I just thought I had mentioned tv a lot. But you are right, I do feel that the choices we had for tv shows when we were young were more interesting in general (I am sure there are great tv shows nowadays, too, there are just too many to figure it all out). One of my favourite shows was called Parcelle de soleil (Pieces of sun, I guess), where this artist, Claude Lafortune, would create stories with paper and scissors, cutting the cardboard as he told the story. I am not the only artist in Quebec to have been inspired by his tv show as a kid.

I also loved Paddington, the old version, which was also in paper. I think he is the reason I like orange marmelade (I actually try to like it because of Paddington!). It is really the visual style of the tv shows that was fascinating to me. I loved Colargol for the colours. I loved Le petit écho de la forêt, also in paper.

”Le chemin de la montagne” (“Up the Mountain Path”). Marianne Dubuc

Can you share a piece of advice from your early years that might be helpful to other writers, illustrators or creatives?

Hmmm… I always find this question a hard one. I don’t see myself as a wise advice giving person. But I guess one thing I could say I do, and might be a good way of doing this work is: do it with honesty and with your heart. It is very important to me that the 5-year-old Marianne would have loved the book I am making.

In this time and age, what do you wish people appreciated more?

In children’s books? I would say wordless picture books (smiles).
In life in general? This is too big a question to answer in these times of pandemic, climate change, Ukraine war, etc… I guess appreciate life’s little pleasures, because they can be taken away anytime.

Is there anything new you are working on at the moment, if you are at liberty to say?

I have been having a very hard time writing and creating books in the past two years because of the pandemic. I lack creative space, and I know I am not the only one. I have been working on a new book that will actually be a comic book. It is a new way of storytelling, and I like to explore it.

Oh, a comic book sounds interesting. Our son is discovering Tintin and he is fascinated.

Ah! The joys of Tintin. Our kids are more into mangas, they have read so many. (smiles)

Thank you, Marianne, for this wonderful talk and incursion into your universe.

Website: mariannedubuc.com | Instagram: @marianne_dubuc

Editorial: Keep the Sweat Off

photo: movie still, Luke Wilson as Richie Tenenbaum in “The Royal Tenenbaums” | Buena Vista Pictures

The Editorial: thoughts, short stories
or essays about the world of cinema

It’s clay season! So let’s talk tennis in film.

Wes Anderson is one of the most original contemporary film-makers. Such distinctive visual aesthetic has he created that you can immediately tell if it’s a Wes Anderson movie. Costumes rank very high in his visual storytelling and have the ability to reveal more about his characters and their surrounding world more than any other narrative element.

The Royal Tenenbaums is a tale of a family of faded glory still living in their genius heyday, but the story is centered around Luke Wilson’s character, Richie. The film is really about Richie, said Anderson about the role he and Owen Wilson wrote especially for Luke. “He is the hero of the movie. […] He does things as a result of which everything’s happening. He’s lying and doing the things that are making the next thing happen.”

Richie Tenenbaum is a former tennis prodigy, as we learn in flashbacks, whose career has spectacularly flopped – his meltdown on court, when he finishes the match in tears at the US Nationals, after 72 unforced errors, underhand serves, and the removal of his shoes, is a moment to remember – but he is still clinging to the prime of his success. His clothes tell us so. His costume places him firmly in the category of one of the most original characters. He still sports a retro headband, arms bands and Fila logo t-shirts, his style taking direct cue from Björn Borg’s 1970s and 1980s tennis court attire (beard and lustrous locks included), even when his tennis whites grow into a camel toned suit. “Keeps the sweat off,” comments Wes Anderson about Richie’s ever-present headband in his book-length interview with Matt Zoller Seitz. In The Royal Tenenbaums, like in all Anderson’s films, the characters wear their personalities on the outside.

Posted by classiq in Editorial, Film | | Comments Off

10 April 2022

April Newsletter: On Authenticity. In Films and Real Life

Photos: Classiq Journal

It’s refreshing and a joy to read someone say what he thinks without restraint. Woody Allen’s Apropos of Nothing is hilarious and irreverent, full of amusing quips and snide remarks, like his best scripts. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed an autobiography so thoroughly. A lot has to do with his brilliant writing and self-deprecating humour, of course, but most of all with his honesty and authenticity. Woody Allen has a signature tone, one that it’s at its peak in subdued yet amusing dramas, one that “drew rueful comedy from reality’s refusal to play ball, crafting dramas in which the need for illusion and the urge for disillusion found an immaculate, porpoise-like balance,” as Tom Shone wrote in another book, Woody Allen: A Retrospective.

Woody Allen is a great artist. He has shown us that a good film and art should not preclude laughter. He has taken a unique stand in making movies. He is cool. And the way I mean cool here is that he is cool for making his own kind of films, for making the films he wants, for saying what he thinks. I can not emphasise this thing enough: saying what he thinks. And making the movies he wants, always, having complete artistic control over his movies, always, making movies because he loves making movies for the sheer creative act. To not let yourself being limited by what others might be doing or thinking. To never be a crowd pleaser. Crowd pleasers, just like so many people who love Woody Allen’s films, but are afraid to talk about them publicly anymore. Instead of trusting your own judgement, you allow yourself to be pulled in every direction, by every distraction, and this has robbed the world and everyone sane on this planet of art, art liberated from the conventional and simplistic canons, and of the work of an artist. “The artist is an irreplaceable figure in our society: a man who can speak his own mind, who can reveal and educate, who can stimulate or appease, and in every sense communicate with fellow human beings,” are the words of another American filmmaker who didn’t care if he didn’t fit in and didn’t give up his mind in favour of position, money or fame – John Cassavetes. Such a pitiful, sad and ridiculous world we’ve come to inhabit, filled with the ignorant and stupid.

There are some Woody Allen films that I constantly rewatch: Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Crimes and Misdemeanors. But I have recently rewatched two films I saw a long time ago. Broadway Danny Rose and A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy. And the feeling remains. I would watch a Woody Allen film anytime. I feel good watching them. Him and Hitchcock. I don’t have a definitive explanation for this and I don’t want to. It’s just how I feel that matters when I watch a film. I always remember things, moments, shots, scenes (like the group of comedians and managers talking and telling in flashback the story of the hapless talent agent Danny Rose over lunch at the Carnegie Deli – it feels like the real thing) from a Woody Allen film, in the way all film lovers (not critics or professionals) always remember their favourite films. It mostly has to do with instinct, and taste, I guess, and when you talk about them with your friends, Woody Allen fans as well (he is Woody to us), you jump from one thing to another because that’s how you talk about a movie you love, impatient to mention one more thing and yet another sometimes without finishing your idea, afraid you will lose track of your thoughts before you pour out your love for the film. What you will always remember are the conversations with friends, not some great review a film got.

That’s the beauty of film. Take what you want from it and fly free. I am pretty sure this applies to life, too.

”It was the real world I was coming in contact with,
and though it’s real for everyone, it’s more real for some than others.”
Woody Allen, Apropos of Nothing

Watching

Love Streams (1982)
John Cassavetes

Watching Love Streams, I kept repeating myself: My God, John Cassavetes made the films he wanted to make, did whatever he wanted to do because that’s what he felt. “Love Streams is a sister coming to visit her brother, then she goes home.” That’s how Cassavetes described the film, “not much of a story”. But family life and relationships are the themes he never changed from going into. Sarah Lawson (Gena Rowlands) and Robert Harmon (John Cassavetes) are brothers who have lived very different lives and are now reunited for a short period of time. Sarah has dedicated herself to family life, to her husband and daughter, but now the marriage is over and her daughter wants to live with her father because she thinks her her mother’s intense love is too much to bear. Robert is a famous writer of bestselling books about lonely women, hookers and night life singers. He is a loner, too, he doesn’t love people and doesn’t know how to deal with his son, whom he has never met until the boy is seven, nor with anybody who loves him. Once again, Cassavetes’ characters are very sincere, he takes them as they are, confronting the silly with the tragic, intensity with audacity, portraying flawed, conflicted, confused people who have feelings but who may not know what they are doing or what to do in certain circumstances – that’s life, and life can become very confused sometimes, but you keep trying. Love Streams is raw, unfiltered, unpredictable, overwhelming, just like real life. And John Cassavetes loved life just as it was – and he made films about it.

Veronika Voss (1982)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder

A sportswriter, Robert Krohn (Hilmar Thate), becomes fascinated and then consumed with the life of Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech). She is a once beloved Nazi-era star, but Robert has no idea of her reputation. She lives in obscurity in postwar Munich, in the care of a physician, and Robert gradually discovers the dark secrets surrounding her. Veronika Voss was Fassbinder’s version of Sunset Boulevard (1950). “The one theme is the destruction, the downfall of a person – superficially a single, almost private occurrence; the other theme is the criminal exploitation of the very different kinds of despair of overly sensitive individuals.” The film is all that and it was also a cinematic accomplishment, a rediscovery of form in black and white, “the most beautiful colours in cinema,” as Fassbinder said at a press conference.

The Red Turtle (2016)
Michael Dudok de Wit

This film, about a man who is shipwrecked on a desert island and encounters a red turtle that changes his life, runs for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Only near the very end, my six year old son observed very casually: “This film is silent.” The idea is that the beautiful animation carries this fantasy story flawlessly. Produced by Toshio Suzuki, the Studio Ghibli producer, The Red Turtle is the studio’s first film made by a non-Japanese director. What is special about this film is that it makes great use of the medium, cinema, and it demands that you pay attention to what is happening, to the surroundings, to the island’s personality, without the need to know much about the characters or the world outside the island. It has mystery and humour – it’s the little crabs that provide the funny element, which nicely balance the fantastical side of the story. I just love films that know how to grab children’s attention gently.

Down by Law (1986)
Jim Jarmusch

How I loved this film! Zack, a disk jockey (Tom Waits), Jack, a pimp (John Lurie), and Roberto, an Italian immigrant (Roberto Benigni), find themselves in the same prison cell. Roberto has the idea to escape. Downbeat and understated, shot in black and white, luminous and striking (not all black and white is the same), Down by Law resides in a world of its own, one that is dictated by characters (as so many of Jarmusch’s films are), you don’t have to know much about them, just watch them unfold on screen. I love how Zack is this cool and self-conscious character and Roberto is the opposite of that, very innocent and straightforward, and Jack is somewhere in between. The film has such subtle humour that never lets you up and fantastic music, featuring one of the best and most recognisable opening scene songs – Tom Waits’ unforgettable Jockey Full of Bourbon. Music is so much part of Jim Jarmusch’s films, it is woven into the celluloid. It is, reportedly, what kickstarts his ideas and imagination when he is writing a script. His soundtracks give voice to his drifters and dreamers, and, in turn, the characters come alive through the music and enter our own imagination.

Silent Running (1972)
Douglas Trumbull

Three years after working with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey, special effects artist Douglas Trumbull made his directorial debut with this environmentally themed science fiction. In the distant future, plant life on Earth is extinct. Remaining specimens are cultivated in vast greenhouse-like domes orbiting in space. Bruce Dern is botanist Freeman Lowell, working on the giant freighter Valley Forge, awaiting to refoliate Earth and resuming to extreme measures when he is ordered to destroy the project. The film is more prescient than ever. It’s haunting to see so many issues the world faces today unfold on screen, in the outer space: isolation, alienation, ignorance, fighting lost causes and the inevitable future. Its simplicity, credible special effects and gentle radicalism are the reasons why I believe it can still resonate to many, especially younger generations.

Reading

Children’s books! Of course we read children’s books all the time in our home, but now I am on a double mission. As part of my new project, of interviewing and featuring children’s books writers and illustrators, I have made many trips to my favourite bookshop (it’s the only place on Earth where I have no control over me for spending money) or have re-read some of the favourites in our home, from Robert Ingpen’s Wonderlands (one of the most wonderful books about an artist’s work that I own) and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlands that he illustrated (there are new meanings everywhere in his drawings), to the books of Marianne Dubuc, Shaun Tan and William Grill’s latest release, Bandoola: The Great Elephant Rescue. I love my current state of mind.

”There is a beginning and ending for everything that is alive.
In between is living.”
Bryan Mellonie and Robert Ingpen
Beginning and Endings with Lifetime in Between

Listening

Rain Dogs, Tom Waits. Again. Because I have just watched Down By Law, so how could I not?

Folklore and Evermore, Taylor Swift. I love the new indie sound she has produced with her latest albums.

Exploring

Clay court season starts today and I love hearing stories about the tennis courts of the world, like this one: it “favours court craft instead of pure pace or topspin, so you see a lot more touch and finesse”.

The indie magazine for authentic travelling that I have recently discovered because of its beautiful relaunch cover. Avdanture, a magazine about van culture. A timeless, journal-like, long-form-story publication that people can actually be inspired by to really get out there.

The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s all three newsletters: Roden, Ridgeline, and Huh. Wes Del Val’s book-ish interviews. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Team Deakins, with Roger and James Deakins. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. The Racquet magazine newsletter. The Adventure Podcast: Terra Incognita. The print magazines Monocle and Sirene.

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